Amusing ourselves to death
Huxley was right

10 Papers Every Programmer Should Read (At Least Twice)

A real long time ago I signed up with the by now well known BookMooch:

a community where you can send away books you do not read anymore and can retrieve books you would like (for free).

I started out by registering a book I wanted to drop. This book, which I once picked up in some airport bookshop before a flight was requested today (!) as a mail dropped in my mailbox. The request came from an american teacher in photography (with a great site). She wants this book:

I now have two problems:

1. Since the book is quite heavy it will cost me quite something to the U.S.A.
2. I don’t have time to go to the post office
3. I do not know how to pack the book
4. I have forgotten how it was supposed to work:

Problem 1: ah well… maybe I can then also request a book from someone, which is also a nice experiment, I absolutely need to complete my Laumer collection one day and this might be a good way since paying sellers on ebay the shipping costs for the Laumer books is probably more than the costs I will pay. Besides that I am over 3 points (I have 3.1 points).

Problem 2: One of the major not-nice-for-a-smoker things of my current project is that I have to walk for at least 15 minutes to walk from my car… to my client. Every day, after 1.5hr traffic jam at a minimum. Since I hate this, It might be interesting to make it worthwhile because coincidently the only shop on the road is… a postoffice! Might actually become a habit and useful.

Problem 3: How should I send the book? Does it need a big box? Only paper? I think I need packaging material! Not only for this book, but also for future books I’m going to send. I hope they have this also at the post office. Maybe the stuff with the bubbles and some solid carton and … of course lots of tape! And address labels! So I will have to buy this first.

Problem 4: That’s easy I looked them up in the FAQ:

Bookmooch works via points, the rules are:

Well… let’s send it! (and explore BookMooch some more)

Book.populair.eu – Where do you get those 1.000.000 free books from?

Ik ga dus op 28 december naar de selexyz site, en kom op een bedrag NET onder de 20 euro die op mijn boekenbon staat:

 Wat een Onzin! (H. de Regt & Dooremalen, H.) “Het bovennatuurlijke is in. Mediums, paragnosten, homeopaten, je kunt tegenwoordig niet meer om ze heen. Herman de Regt en Hans Dooremalen onderwierpen diverse van deze modeverschijnselen aan een grondig onderzoek en schreven er een aanstekelijk boek over. Hun conclusie is ondubbelzinnig: wat een onzin! Onze fascinatie voor het bovennatuurlijke blijkt niet onschuldig. In Wat een onzin! komt een bonte stoet voorbij van bijna-doodervaringsdeskundigen en zelfverklaarde heksen. De wetenschap staat steeds meer onder druk; we kunnen blijkbaar niet goed leven in een wereld zonder toverij. Toch is juist de wetenschap het instrument dat ons moet beschermen tegen de onzinnige claims en praktijken van hen die geloven in het bovennatuurlijke.” (250 pagina’s, € 18,95)

(ook te bestellen bij boek.net, central point, AKO,  Knowington, BOL, etc…) maar…. :

Dan maar even wachten tot de na-solstice periode voorbij is….

Hoffmann – Struwwelpeter
brilliant illustrated book (1845), I might print it out for Maarten

by Carl Sagan

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"
"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle — but no dragon.
"Where’s the dragon?" you ask.
"Oh, she’s right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she’s an invisible dragon."
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon’s footprints.
"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."
Then you’ll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."
You’ll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.
"Good idea, but she’s an incorporeal dragon and the paint won’t stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won’t work.
Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?

The Fanfiction Glossary
Now I need to remember all of this Terms!

Pretty extensive site on Medieval Superstition, on beasts and other things. A good resource for skeptics to find out the history of some cultural threads.

E.g. on “pearls” :

The agate stone is attracted to pearls and so can be used to find them. Once the king pearl has been captured, the lesser pearls are easy to catch. Drinking a mixture of pearl and dew will cure any disease, but cannot reverse death.

The Mutopia Project
The Mutopia Project offers sheet music editions of classical music for free download.